Solace
by oh-cripe-my-fish
Summary: When everything seems to be in ruins and coated in ash, France can't think of any better place or person to run to than Spain. prerequisite Frain. Complicated Fruk.


Francis shows up at his door all smiles, cracked around the edges, hairline fractures in a mask. His eyes shine bright blue, piercing with tears. Antonio doesn't need Francis to breathe a word to know what happened, the story can be told through his eyes alone. Realising Arthur has finished with Francis once more, Antonio opens his home to his heartbroken best friend, opens his arms wide under the warm sun of Madrid. As he usually does, Francis never hesitates to find solace in them, hugs Antonio as tight as comfort will allow him to. If he has a home beyond home, it's in Antonio, as strange as that is, but running to Antonio to escape the memories of Arthur in Paris has always been the norm. He's had to do it too many times, now.

Antonio is a shining example of a ride or die friend, shining so much brighter than the blinding sun in the smooth blue of the cloudless skies spanning the Mediterranean coastline. Antonio drops everything physically possible to help Francis when he's in need, cancels coffee dates, reschedules conference meetings, alters his way of life, buys French food and French wine, knows Francis' most beloved books, movies, poets - has them at the ready, despite Francis insisting he needn't do any of it. It's astonishing, that within days of taking Francis into his home, Francis is already numbing to the sting of heartbreak at the kind and caring hands of the intuitive Spaniard, who routinely pulls open the heavy curtains of the guest room Francis is crashing in to let the Spanish summer sun shine down on him. Antonio has always been the one to drag Francis out of sombre, depressing solitude into civilisation where he can still feel lonely without being entirely on his own.

Antonio teaches Francis how to feel again, takes him to the coast to feel the cool of the sea and soft sand, hikes him up hillsides to feel the gentle tickling prickling of rugged, wild grass at the top. The Spaniard teaches and coaxes feeling back into Francis, always knows the right jokes to tell that will find laughter among ache and misery. He knows the exact words to say when Francis is so detached from his emotions he can't shed a tear, all it takes is one sentence from Antonio and suddenly everything is falling out of Francis like a waterfall.

"Streams only stay fresh because they're always running." Antonio murmurs softly, rubbing Francis' back as the Frenchman weeps hard on the balcony in evening sunlight, the sun resting low on the horizon casting everything in lukewarm amber and muted red. "Don't let the pain stagnate. Get it out."

Antonio waits, like he has all the time in the world, for the tears to dry. When Francis finally finishes, he sags into his deckchair with exhaustion. Antonio sits back in his, picks up his iced sangria from the table and takes a sip, a hand still resting on Francis' shoulder. Francis drops his head and grazes his cheek on Antonio's soft knuckles tiredly.

"Better?" Antonio asks, thumb brushing back and forth across the course beard on the underside of France's chin, getting thicker which each day Francis didn't tend to it.

Lifting his head and nodding lethargically, Francis smiles as Antonio's hand slips from his shoulder. This was so much better than being entirely on his own. "I feel childish." Francis says quietly, voice small and hoarse.

Antonio lifts his eyebrows in question.

"For being..." Francis continues, looking down at Antonio's knee, almost grazing his. "back here, with him. Again. Acting like it's for the first time, and not the millionth."

Antonio smiles and takes a sip of his sangria, knocking his knee against the Frenchman's gently. "Only the seventh time, Francis. Try not to be too dramatic." He reminds him, the jest even gentler.

"Mon Dieu, that sounds as bad. We're a broken record." Francis looks back up at Antonio, who matches the distraught realisation in Francis' blue eyes with sympathetic olive green. Something about Antonio's presence, the light touch to his forearm, it soothes the hysteria in Francis. That all it takes to fend off the worst of the sadness and he feels exhaustion wash over him again. "I want it to work out with Arthur so _desperately_, Antonio… but it seems impossible when we keep repeating ourselves, making the same mistakes over and over…"

"That doesn't necessarily mean that if you keep trying you'll keep failing." The Spaniard says, hating to see Francis slouching in his chair defeatedly, eyes still puffy and nose red, he hated seeing one of his best friends so distraught like this, yet he can't hate Arthur for Francis' heartbreak either. If they were human, their time limited and Arthur had done something completely unforgivable, Antonio would tell Francis to toss Arthur to the curb. Yet Antonio knew sustaining relationships as personifications was one of the biggest challenges they'd ever face. So few of them tried as a result. The only pair he knew to have succeeded so far without any bumps in the road was Feliciano and Ludwig. He also knew Arthur and Francis had come farther from most, to suggest Francis throw away all that progress would be foolish. Besides, he didn't know the ins and outs of the relationship, it wasn't his place to suggest to something as drastic as ending it all. Only Francis could decide something as big as that. If he did decide to end it, Antonio would absolutely support him through it, but he wouldn't push Francis towards that option just yet.

"This is our seventh time trying, I don't know anymore…"

"If it's any comfort, our relationships aren't completely different to human relationships," Antonio continues, "but they certainly aren't supposed to mimic them." Antonio slurps up a small segment of fruit from the top of his drink, munches on it and swallows as France laments. "One break in a relationship or break up between two humans could equal dozens for us. With the length of _our_ lives, we're going to get stuck, repeat ourselves a few times. The difference between us and humans is that humans have decades and we have a few hundred years, a millennia or more. More happens in a millennia than a decade." the Spaniard tears his thoughtful gaze from the skyline to meet Francis'. "Strawberry?"

Francis blinks at the tranquillity Antonio has instilled in him, it's a miraculous feeling to be grounded again, anchored when the world felt like it had been ending minutes prior, his tears blurring the beauty of the sunset. He smiles genuinely at the question and nods. Antonio takes the spoon from the jug of sangria and uses it to scoop a strawberry from his own drink, spoons it into Francis' mouth who eyes shine in watery amusement at being fed.

"I spoil you way too much." Antonio teases with a small laugh. "get your own strawberry next time."

Francis laughs and stands to get to the table with the sweetened sangria, pours himself a glass. "That sangria's really nice."

"I have Bordeaux wine inside, if you'd prefer that?" Antonio asks and Francis shakes his head, sitting back down with a sigh and a full cup.

"Sangria's sweeter. Sweet is what I need right now."

They share a look in which Antonio smiles and nods in understanding and for a fraction of a second, Francis wishes Arthur's face brought him calm like Antonio's did. The Frenchman redirects his eyes to the horizon, watches the winking sun and a pair of birds chasing each other in the sky. Silence establishes itself, blankets them, warm and loose and comfortable, easy to sit through, unlike the last silence with Arthur, cold and callous and terse, suffocating, as everything crashed and burned around them.

Inhaling the fresh sea air, Francis notices breathing seems to be much easier here than in it had in Paris a week ago.

The ice rattles in Antonio's glass as he swirled the contents absently. Francis' eyes flicker back to Antonio and he realises, not for the first time, that both Arthur and Antonio have green eyes. Arthur's are smouldering grassland while Antonio's are like an olive farm, or the wink of sunlight through the potent green leaves of an orchard. At the moment he prefers to stand in the patches of Antonio's sunlight than in the smoke of Arthur's fires. In that moment, he's too tired to feel heinous at the thought. Arthur had been the one to leave him, why should he feel bad for comparing his ex to someone else? Yet, it doesn't take a seer to know how things between Arthur and Francis will turn out. As it usually goes, Francis will return to Paris and Arthur will come to his senses eventually, beg for Francis to forgive him. Then Francis, smitten with the exhilaration and adrenaline of fighting and taming fires, will gradually forgive him, after everything.

"It'll work out in the end." Antonio says with such certainty Francis can't help believing him. "I won't lie to you and tell you that it'll work out with Arthur," Antonio rests his elbow on the armrest of his seat and rests a cheek in his palm, tired but affectionate eyes resting on Francis. "But you'll be happy with someone, someday."

For a reason unknown to him, Francis has to look away as Antonio blinks dark eyelashes at him. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he sips on his sangria and rests his head on the back of the wicker chair, hair spilling out behind him as the evening breeze cooled his neck.

"One day."

Maybe one day, the time would come to move on.


End file.
